What is Whitehat in Affiliate Marketing, and How Does the Vertical Work?

Welcome, community! In affiliate marketing, there are certain verticals that many consider nearly archaic, but we prefer to call them “classic.” One such classic vertical is physical goods affiliate, which many confuse with E-commerce. How does this vertical work, and is it worth engaging with today? We’ll tell you all about it in our latest review!

Before we begin, we remind you that we recently talked about another cool vertical that is increasingly dominating the market—iGaming. So hurry up and read it to join the most profitable niche today!

So, what is physical goods affiliate marketing?

Physical goods affiliate is a vertical in affiliate marketing where advertisers offer affiliates the opportunity to drive traffic to their products. The product can be anything: from clothing to adult toys. Or even Dominic Toretto’s cross, if you are an oldfag and understand what we mean.

There are extremely many goods offers today. Advertisers propose to promote any product that would meet the terms of the Cash-On-Delivery model. According to this model, the client has the opportunity to pay for the product upon receipt, that is, it is the same post-payment that we love at “Nova Poshta”.

Unlike E-commerce, in goods affiliate marketing, we pour traffic not to a store or service, but specifically to a particular product. This allows us to:

1. More quality set up the target;
2. Reduce costs for the ad campaign;
3. Get more profit with a better set-up ad campaign.

Overall, there are a lot of advantages, but we will return to them later.

Types of Physical Goods affiliate marketing

Considering the fact that a multitude of different products can be bought online, it is quite obvious that all of them are divided into various categories. Besides the obvious differentiation by type of product, the vertical itself is divided into categories. Namely, there are:

• White goods affiliate marketing
• Grey goods affiliate marketing
• Black goods affiliate marketing

White goods affiliate marketing is the most “gentle” category, which includes all products that do not violate the terms of use of advertising networks. Working with such offers is quite straightforward because you won’t need to resort to cloaking, disguise creatives, etc. Just take a product, for example – a dress, set up the ad campaign, and earn profit. It seems simple.

Grey goods affiliate marketing is the category of offers where dubious products are involved. It is not necessarily something prohibited at first glance. Rather, it refers to misleading, where the stated characteristics of the product do not quite match what the consumer will ultimately receive. For example, this could include Chinese copies of iPhones, and much other technology that may even visually differ from what is shown in the creatives.

Black goods affiliate marketing includes products that are prohibited both by the law of the country and the terms of use of the advertising network. The issue here is quite complicated. Although adult goods affiliate marketing seems entirely legal, promoting it through advertising networks is extremely difficult due to the bans of the networks themselves.

Besides, we deliberately did not provide examples with various bioorganic additives, as it pertains to nutra. It is a standalone niche with its own laws, so it should not be equated with classic goods affiliate marketing.

The Difference Between Goods affiliate marketing and Nutra

At this stage, it’s worth pausing in more detail because many newcomers either equate goods affiliate marketing with nutra or simply confuse them. However, there are several significant differences that will help you understand why it is better to choose goods affiliate marketing if you lack experience in affiliate marketing:

• Nutra mostly consists of grey offers, while most goods are white. Because of this, working with nutra is much more difficult, although there is a difference in profit;
• The moderation of nutra is an extremely challenging stage that can lead to the blocking of your advertising account even before starting the ad campaign. With goods affiliate marketing, you won’t need to look for potential “red flags” on creatives that could trigger the moderators;
• Consequently, advertising accounts under goods affiliate marketing last much longer, so it will be not only easier for you to start ad campaigns but also to scale them.

In essence, the list could be continued for quite a while. All differences will mainly concern the color: working with nutra, you choose a grey vertical, with goods affiliate marketing – a white one.

Advantages of Goods Offers

Let’s talk about the advantages. This is what every affiliate looks at before choosing a vertical to work with.

Goods affiliate marketing, especially white, is an extremely convenient niche. It has a lot of different products, which allows you to choose the most relevant offer for the target audience you are used to working with. So, if you already know how to work with certain verticals, switching to goods affiliate marketing will be quite simple.

The key advantages of goods affiliate marketing are as follows:

1. It’s a possibility to quickly start an advertising campaign. You won’t have to study the market for a long time, disguise creatives, create dozens of accounts in the advertising network, etc. Choose a product – set up an ad campaign – earn profit, it’s that simple;
2. A tolerant attitude towards white (and even grey) goods affiliate marketing allows you to work comfortably; you don’t risk your own advertising account;
3. High conversion rate. If you hit the target, you are guaranteed to receive a large number of conversions, after which it’s just a matter of scaling the ad campaign to increase profits;
4. By the way, the ability to scale in goods affiliate marketing is extremely impressive. Almost immediately, you will understand whether it is worth investing more money in the ad campaign. And if all conditions for this are created, and the product really has a demand among the target audience for which you have set up the ad campaign, then scaling will allow you to significantly increase profits;
5. Goods affiliate marketing is about stable and high profits. The main thing is to choose a quality product so as not to encounter returns and not lose ready conversions.

The most tangible benefits of goods affiliate marketing are experienced when working specifically with white offers. However, it’s important to understand that working with grey or black offers can also provide certain advantages, such as higher payouts, for which affiliate are willing to endure all those inconveniences. But considering that working with such offers is still harder, we would not recommend them for beginners. So, take this into account.

Features of Working with Goods affiliate marketing

Despite the simplicity of working with goods offers, there are certain nuances that we cannot ignore.

First, let’s talk about the cost of traffic. The price can vary, but when working with top offers, you will have to pay quite a bit for each lead. The reason here is not only the competition but also the requirements of the advertisers. Most of them do not allow the use of dubious traffic sources, including teasers and push notifications. And buying exclusively targeted traffic is an expensive pleasure, though you may have no other choice.

In some cases, you might not even expect a payout if the terms specify a certain check amount. This means that if a person buys goods for an amount less than what the advertiser expects, you will not receive a commission.

As for the payouts, there are several models that are most relevant to the niche. First and foremost, there is CPA – the advertiser pays for a target action. Additionally, you can receive compensation through the RevShare model, where the advertiser will pay you a percentage of their profit. Other payment models also occur, but they are more the exception than the rule.

Finally, there’s the need to be creative. It’s quite challenging to sell a consumer any product in the context of the rapid development of E-commerce (here we are not talking about the vertical, but about the industry as a whole). Therefore, to attract traffic attention and, most importantly, to sell products to them, you will need to create quality and unusual creatives that ensure a high conversion rate.

How to Drive Traffic to Goods Offers

To work effectively with goods affiliate marketing, you need to understand a few things. For starters, we recommend choosing products that are most understandable to you. Certainly, these might not always be the most profitable offers, but this way you can gain experience and skills that you can later invest in other products.

When choosing a product, make sure it is relevant. Use appropriate services like Google Trends or Wordstat for this purpose.

Choose the channel from which you will be driving traffic. As we mentioned earlier, dubious traffic sources are unlikely to be relevant here. Therefore, focus on organic, contextual, and targeting advertising. For certain products, organic might be the most profitable option if you’re driving traffic from a thematically close website.

Do not forget to learn from competitors to get ahead of them. Goods affiliate marketing is a highly popular niche, so almost any product will have a significant competitor, which you cannot afford to ignore.

Quality creatives are one of the key secrets to success. With their help, you can effectively attract traffic attention, and then it’s up to the landing page and pre-landing page to convert every click on the advertisement.

Finally, do not forget about scaling. If you see that the advertising campaign is highly effective, it is a clear sign that you need to invest more funds into it, obtaining more and more conversions. By the way, this rule is relevant not only for goods affiliate marketing but for any other vertical. If the campaign resonates with the audience – scale up.

In Conclusion

We hope our response to the question of what goods affiliate marketing is was thoroughly comprehensive, and the advice provided was effective and useful. Goods affiliate marketing is a vertical that is friendly to affiliates, allowing them to work and profit without spending time on cloaking, creating additional accounts, etc. By choosing a quality product suitable for your target audience, you can scale the advertising campaign, which will significantly increase your profits. This highlights the tremendous potential of the niche that should not be overlooked.

We also strongly encourage you to join our Telegram community, because we really miss you 💗. There you will find fresh and interesting information that will help you become even more professional, earning more and more profit.

With love and respect, Your Geek!

What is Goods affiliate marketing and How Does This Vertical Work? FAQs